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B

Ballad

Ballads, in literature, are usually short, narrative poems relating a single, dramatic event. Two forms of the ballad are often distinguished—the folk ballad, dating from about the 12th century, and the literary ballad, dating from the late 18th century. The anonymous folk ballad, was composed to be sung. The literary ballad is a narrative poem created by a poet in imitation of the old anonymous folk ballad. Usually the literary ballad is more elaborate and complex; the poet may retain only some of the devices and conventions of the older verse narrative. The traditional ballad stanza has four lines, alternating between four iambic beats (da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM), and three beats (da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM) per line. The second and fourth lines rhyme. One of the more famous ballads, by S. T. Coleridge is the The Ancient Mariner:

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
"By thy long gray beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?"

Coleridge writing a six-line ballad:

An orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.

Ballade

In the Ballade, there are usually three stanzas of seven, eight, or ten-lines and and a shorter final stanza (or envoy) of four or five lines. All stanzas end with the same one-line refrain. Respectively, these have the rhyme schemes and envoys ababbcC bcbC (cf. Chaucer's "Ballade of Good Counsel"). The refrains appear at the end of each stanza and the concluding envoy.

Bard's Biographies

Forum for our Member Biographies. This is a member's only forum.

BBL

Mosaic Speak: Be back later

Blank Verse

Blank Verse is verse consisting of unrhymed lines, usually of iambic pentameter (a line to be scanned in five feet where each foot contains an unaccented syllable and an accented syllable). Many of the speeches in the plays of William Shakespeare are written in blank verse such as The Tempest.

Bronze Member

Member designation for those who have been inactive for 6 months or more.

BRB

Mosaic Speak: Be right back

Bump

Mosaic Speak: A word used to BUMP a thread for the purpose of bringing it to the top of the forum for immediate reads.

BTW

Mosaic Speak: By the way

Byr a thoddaid

This Welsh poetic form combines the eight-syllable couplet with another type of couplet called toddaid byr. Toddaid byr consists of ten syllables, then six; in the ten-syllable line the main rhyme is found before the end, and the syllables that follow must be linked -- by alliteration, rhyme, or assonance -- with the early syllables in the six-syllable line.

Why do they make things sound so complicated? This is actually quite challenging but enormous fun. Basically, the couplet lines are made up of eight syllables each. There is no meter, but there must be endrhymes:

Dark is this maze wherein I err.
No Theseus I; no comforter,

Then we have two lines of different length. 10 and 6 syllables. The eighth syllable forming an end rhyme.The last syllable echoes the first or second syllable of the short line.

No Ariadne at my side, to hold
Her golden skein as guide

Put it all together:

Dark is this maze wherein I err.
No Theseus I; no comforter,
No Ariadne at my side, to hold
Her golden skein as guide.

By Thomas Vaughan

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